Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Photoshop has become a symbol of our global society’s unobtainable standards for beauty. Not too long ago, journalist Esther Honig requested several photoshop experts to ’retouch’ a plain photograph of her in line with the standards of their society for what constituted a ’beautiful’ woman. The results were revealing. Out of all the images she received, it was clear that not one culture had an identical understanding of what ’beauty’ meant.

We suggest taking a look — this is truly fascinating. Some of these might seem bizarre to you, some might seem ordinary, but overall you’ll be impressed.

The original

Argentina

Australia

Bangladesh

Chile

Germany

Greece

India

Indonesia

Israel

Italy

Kenya

Morocco

Pakistan

The Philippines

Romania

Serbia

Sri Lanka

Britain

Ukraine

USA

Vietnam

Venezuela

The results of this project so impressed Esther that she became obsessed with finding out about the different standards of beauty which exist around the world. ’Photoshop allows any of us to become “beautiful”’, says Esther, ’but if we compare our own understanding of that word to others in a global context, we see that beauty is essentially an illusive concept.’